Ken Salazar returns to Colorado with image intact and many options

When Ken Salazar, the former Colorado attorney general, went to Washington as a U.S. senator, he was perceived as a consensus-builder and a centrist, a bolo-tie, cowboy-hat traditionalist steeped in religious and rural values whose populist message appealed to voters throughout the state.

Eight years later, the last four as secretary of the Interior, he leaves the Beltway to return home situated to do virtually anything he wants.

As the nation's largest landlord, he rewrote chunks of the book on managing public lands and dealing with American Indian claims. But it is a tenure not without controversy: He opened the Alaskan Arctic for oil drilling and issued an unprecedented moratorium on offshore drilling after BP's Macondo well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Yet, it is precisely because Salazar, a Democrat, was able to navigate those emotionally charged issues — whether that meant brokering deals or making unilateral decisions — that he returns to Colorado with most of his political image intact.

"Out of most people in the Cabinet, he was able to remain a centrist. Sure, he did things to make people angry, but when everyone's a little unhappy with you, that usually means you're successful," said political analyst Jennifer Duffy, who assesses elections and political trends for the independent, bipartisan newsletter The Cook Political Report.

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His homecoming brings additional political baggage, but also the promise of a bright, and perhaps complicated, future. A longtime public servant, Salazar, 57, says it's time to make money and focus on his family. His wife struggles with health issues, and she and Salazar are the legal guardians of an autistic granddaughter. While law firms are expected to throw their doors open for him, Salazar has also committed to help President Barack Obama push immigration reform. Running for governor may be in his future, but his political plans now are on hold.

"I return home to Colorado because I want to make sure that I live up to what I think is my highest moral responsibility," he said. "And that is helping my family, including my extended family, my mother and my siblings, and connecting to some things that I have not done as much as I would love to do."

"New sheriff in town"

Salazar hesitated when asked to run Interior. As a natural-resources lawyer, former counsel to Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, and a two-term attorney general, he was a good fit. But when President Obama was elected in 2008, Salazar was only halfway through his U.S. Senate term.

A fundraiser that December had helped him raise more than $430,000 for the quarter, according to federal records. He was on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and took a lead role in passing energy legislation aimed at making the country more energy independent. He was a member of the so-called Gang of 14, a bipartisan group of senators who negotiated an agreement to prevent filibusters of judicial nominees except under "extraordinary circumstances." And he liked being able to fly home regularly to see his family.

"Leaving all that was a very difficult decision," Salazar said recently, sitting at a table in a backroom of Tamales by La Casita, the Denver restaurant founded by his close friend Paul Sandoval, who died last year.

But Salazar is quick to recognize a hole in the fence, even when he doesn't feel penned in. Ten years ago, while focused on a run for governor, Salazar suddenly pivoted into the 2004 U.S. Senate race when Ben Nighthorse Campbell decided not to seek a third term.

"Circumstances in life happen. I seized the opportunities as they came along," he said.

He said he took the job at Interior because "at the end of the day, I always felt that I had more of an executive ability and that I could get more done as an executive than I could in a deliberative body."

He started with a bang.

"There's a new sheriff in town," he said at the Denver headquarters of the Minerals Management Service, the agency that oversaw the nation's oil and gas resources, including offshore drilling. The agency was embroiled in scandal after a federal investigation found employees accepting gifts, drugs and sex from energy company representatives.

That bluntness resurfaced a few months later when he announced new restrictions for drilling on federal lands. The oil and gas industry, he said, would no longer be treated as "kings of the world."

Industry groups, including the Independent Petroleum Association, immediately characterized his plan as punitive. They accused Salazar of letting government bureaucrats, instead of the free market, dictate energy development.

It was against this backdrop a few months later — April 20, 2010 — that BP's well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and contaminating the gulf with more than 200 million gallons of oil.

Salazar, who became the public face of the administration's response, brought in the heads of drilling and production companies — even those who had nothing to do with the spill — to discuss what equipment and technology were needed and available to cap the leak.

Salazar said he convened the meeting because "no one had answers. I didn't have the answers. We had to find a solution and turn over every rock." Shortly after the spill, Salazar lashed out publicly. He declared he would keep a "boot on the neck" of BP until the company fixed the leak.

If there ever had been a sense by energy production companies that Salazar was trying to work with them, rather than against them, it ended on that day, some in the industry said.

The boot comment "permeated into private meetings with the secretary. The meetings were adversarial. We never felt like it was collaborative. We felt like we were in the penalty box, even those of us who weren't involved in the spill," said Jim Noe, executive vice president of Texas-based Hercules Offshore.

BP declined to comment.

Over the next month, Salazar's actions further incensed the industry. He instituted an offshore drilling moratorium that business groups and Gulf Coast political leaders and residents said would destroy the oil and gas industry and cost thousands of jobs. Then his department had to apologize to a panel of engineering experts for associating their names with the moratorium, which they had not reviewed and did not approve.

Critics, including environmentalists, blamed Salazar for failing to put safety standards in place that could have averted the disaster and for responding too slowly once it happened. Even the president publicly weighed in, saying Salazar's "pace of reform was just too slow" at Minerals Management Service.

"It was a very tough time," said Salazar, who was working 18-hour days. But "no one ever told me, 'Ken, you're doing something wrong here.' Or 'Ken, we need to keep you on a short leash.' Or 'Ken, we're going to throw you under the bus.' "

Eventually, after 87 days and significant damage to the coastline and fisheries, the gushing undersea well was capped.

"Had it gone on longer, had there been ongoing discussions and scandals, and maybe focused hearings, it would have been a political issue" for Salazar, said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, who at the time of the spill said it would be a "huge test" for Salazar. "But in the broad range from bad to good, he falls somewhere in the middle. Overall politically, it's generally not a lasting issue for him."

Salazar lifted the moratorium in October 2010, and operations began a few months later under new safeguards. Industry leaders complained about burdensome red tape, but today 51 rigs are working in the Gulf of Mexico. The average in 2009 was 42 a week.

Meanwhile, environmentalists complained that new rules weren't strict enough. Salazar later riled the environmental groups in other ways: opening the Alaskan Arctic to drilling, removing endangered species protections on wolves in Wyoming and approving leases to mine 750 million tons of coal.

But Salazar also pressed on with other parts of an agenda that emphasized preservation of open land, adding what he calls "hides on the wall": 10 wildlife refuges , seven national parks, new rules for hydraulic fracturing on federal lands, 34 solar, wind and geothermal projects on public lands, and the nation's first offshore wind farm off the Massachusetts coast.

"Consensus-building magic"

Salazar also helped settle decades-old, multi-billion dollar land-and-water disputes with American Indian tribes, one of the most prominent examples supporters point to when describing his hand-on, aggressive approach to brokering deals. Six water settlements gave Western tribes control over huge amounts of water they had sought in lawsuits, and committed the government to paying more than $2 billion for dams, pipelines and reservoirs. Salazar also helped finalize a $3.4 billion settlement in a class-action case where plaintiffs wanted as much as $176 billion, claiming that the government incorrectly accounted for Indian trust assets that belong to Americans Indians.

He also held hundreds of stakeholder forums, seeking consensus on land conservation from the canyon lands of Utah to the Everglades of Florida. The meeting rooms were often jammed with key players from all sides, with Salazar dropping in, if not running the forums, and urging deadlocked parties to work together.

Even when decisions left all sides unsatisfied, the time Salazar spent gathering information bolstered his image as a fair broker.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate energy committee, clashed repeatedly with Salazar over drilling in northern Alaska. Interior officials for years had blocked Conoco from building a bridge over the Colville River — crucial for access to the 23 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve. Industry leaders also wanted to drill offshore in the Arctic Ocean.

Salazar visited Alaska four times, circling the tundra with Murkowski in small aircraft and helicopters and sleeping in an Inuit village to hear native perspectives.

Finally, during a stop by the river, he told her he had made a decision: Conoco would receive the permit for the bridge but only half the petroleum reserve would be opened for drilling. In the Arctic Ocean, there could be exploratory test wells offshore but they must adhere to strict safeguards.

"I don't agree with all of his decisions, with the policies," Murkowski said. "But I do believe that he has given me a fair hearing, in the sense of wanting to try to understand where I might be coming from on the issues."

After the BP spill, industry representatives say the relationship with Salazar got better — especially after the administration said it was open to more oil and gas development.

"Early on we had our differences in opinion," said Jack Gerard, head of American Petroleum Institute, to reporters at an event hosted by the U.S. Energy Association last month. "Over time, we found more common ground."

Noe, who said that the drilling community is still upset by the slow pace for issuing permits, said the "rocky relationship" isn't as rocky.

"He should be commended for ultimately making offshore drilling safer," Noe said. "But he did it by running roughshod over the industry."

Salazar said he has no regrets.

"I always felt putting the boot on the neck of BP, as I said I was doing in Houston, was what I did. I think I continue to do that today ... to keep BP accountable for its transgressions."

Time to put family first

Some see Salazar as governor.

Others see him as a high-level envoy or ambassador.

A few consider him a good pick for a presidential ticket down the road.

Salazar says he's only looking two or three years into the future.

"I'm going to get a good job and take care of my family," he said, noting he won't speak to potential employers until he leaves the administration.

Pushing back in a metal chair, wearing faded jeans, a baseball hat and cowboy boots, Salazar smiles and adds: "I guess I have to put together a résumé."

His mother, Emma Salazar, 91, still lives in the San Luis Valley on the family ranch where she raised eight children. She has had heart problems, and Salazar's time in Washington made it difficult to see her as much as he would like.

Additionally, he and his wife, Hope, who have been married 26 years and have two adult daughters, are the legal guardians for their 5-year-old granddaughter, Mireya, who has autism and requires special schooling. Hope is also taking care of her 83-year-old father, who lives with them, and has struggled with health problems such as diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. In December, she had rotator-cuff surgery.

"She does a Herculean job," Salazar said. "But she needs some help."

Financially, Salazar took a hit in 2011 after Sen. David Vitter, R-La, said he would block a $19,600 pay raise that would have put Salazar's salary on par with other Cabinet members. Vitter said he would stand in the way until Salazar sped up issuance of deep-water drilling permits. Salazar sent Senate leaders a letter, asking them to "set aside any effort to address" the salary inequity and called Vitter's actions "attempted coercion."

Salazar, who has an extensive legal background as both a private and government attorney in natural resources, said he may join a law firm, speak publicly and serve on corporate boards.

"Everyone is interested in talking to him," said Cole Finegan, managing partner of Hogan Lovells' Denver office. "He knows everyone in America and has an unbelievable work ethic. He's a proven commodity."

Salazar said he has ruled out becoming a lobbyist and will do what he can to push an Obama package for immigration reform.

"I think it is wrong for us as a nation to have a class of people who are living in the shadows of our society in constant fear and in a state of inequality," he said.

Colorado politics has transformed over the past 15 years, he notes. In 1997, he and Sandoval sketched out his future possibilities on napkins in the backroom of La Casita. A year later, he was elected attorney general. When Republican Gov. Bill Owens would call expanded cabinet meetings, "there would be 20 to 25 people in the room, and I was the only Democrat," he recalled.

Salazar's 1998 election, said Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli, helped spark the Democratic surge that took off in the early 2000s. Even in 2004, as GOP President George W. Bush won the state, so did Salazar.

"I don't think there is any politician that's better known than Ken Salazar in the state," said Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, who now holds Salazar's old senate seat. "People feel a personal connection with him that is different than anyone else."

There is a chance that if Salazar runs for governor six years down the road, he may face a whole new generation of Democrats who feel it is their time to run, Ciruli said. Although, he added, it would be hard to beat Salazar's "statewide footprint."

Republican strategist Dick Wadhams said regardless of what office Salazar seeks, the GOP will face a "formidable candidate."

"But he was elected statewide because he is a different kind of Democrat," he said. "While he is still a son of the San Luis Valley, his career is also defined by serving in the Obama administration. Maybe that's an asset now, but will it be in two years or more? I don't think so."

While Salazar's time in the administration gives an opponent fodder during a campaign, "the cowboy hat and bolo tie don't get removed just because he spent four years in the Obama cabinet," said political analyst Eric Sondermann. "He still has an ability to pull votes out of small towns and rural Colorado that other Democrats just can't."

For the short term, however, Salazar's next positions include husband, father, son and worker on the family ranch.

"He will come, work, help take care of Mama, and start thinking about what the next chapter of his life will be," his elder brother Leroy Salazar said. "But Ken will not just stay and live the good life. He's got too much energy and too many interests."

Quotes about Ken Salazar

"He has a remarkable skill of being able to listen and get to the heart of the matter and bring opposing parties together. We have such a politically polarized country. We need more people with that skill in positions of responsibility."

Tom Strickland, Salazar's former chief of staff at the Interior Department

"He is somebody who understands the West. He understands the East. He's a man who is pragmatic, deliberative, available."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

"When an individual develops a reputation for hard work and a keen intellect in the U.S. Senate like Ken Salazar did, and then builds on that reputation as the Secretary of the Department of Interior, the opportunities upon leaving office abound. And the opportunities span the political spectrum. Many will want to utilize his talents."

Dirk Kempthorne, former Interior secretary

"He has a certain kind of serenity about who he is and what he is about. ... Obviously, any Democrat who gets elected in Colorado has got to have consensus-building skills. It is part of his DNA."

Bruce Babbitt, former Interior secretary

"The environment he stepped into was impossible. The economy was really struggling. He was trying to figure out how you get anything done when everyone's attention in Congress and the administration was on economic issues and jobs. And he set in motion things that are quite powerful."

"There are a lot of people who are frustrated with this Interior Department. It is a bureaucracy, so it is always a struggle. But the tone and the further restrictions during Salazar's tenure have taken it to a new level. A lot of industry folks do not feel we are being listened to."

Kathleen Sgamma, spokeswoman for Western Energy Alliance

"He brings integrity everywhere he goes. He's always going to do what is right for the country, right for Colorado, before he does something that will benefit himself. He is, by nature, someone who thinks of others. His default position is to help someone else."

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